The present invention relates to a handwritten character recognizing apparatus for recognizing handwritten letters or characters on an online basis.
A technique for recognizing characters such as simplified characters and cursive characters is described in JP-A-2-56689. More specifically, straight lines extending in one direction are extracted from strings of coordinate points which constitute a character. The straight lines extracted are sorted for selecting out a straight line of a large length as a substroke S1. Subsequently, the other line segments than the selected one are set as substrokes S2, whereon recognition is performed by making decision as to presence of a corresponding character in a dictionary on the basis of positions and shapes of the substrokes S1 and S2.
With the conventional technique mentioned above, character recognition is performed on the basis of shapes and dispositions of strokes represented by the coordinates strings which constitute a character pattern. However, the conventional technique suffers problems such as mentioned below because the recognition is performed on the basis of all the coordinates strings.
In general, incapability of recognizing the cursive characters and the simplified characters can be ascribed to the difference between the character patterns inputted and the character patterns stored in the dictionary. When a character is written cursively or continuously, extraneous elements or portions may be inputted, as a result of which the inputted character may present a shape which is utterly different from that of a relevant character pattern stored in the dictionary. Consequently, in order to make it possible to recognize the cursively or continuously written character, it is necessary to discriminatively determine which portions of the inputted character pattern are required for the character recognition and which portions are not required for the recognition. Thus, difficulty is encountered in recognizing properly or satisfactorily the cursively written characters even when the recognition is performed on the basis of all the coordinates.
With a view to solving the problem mentioned above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a character recognizing apparatus which is capable of recognizing even the cursive characters written roughly in incorrect or irregular order and containing modifications and which apparatus can lessen the load involved in the processing.
For achieving the object mentioned above, the character recognizing apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that it includes an input unit for allowing a handwritten character to be inputted to thereby output a coordinate-points string or strings, a dictionary for storing therein a plurality of character codes and character patterns corresponding to the character codes, respectively, an element decomposition module for decomposing the coordinates string outputted from the input unit into a plurality of elements which constitute the character, a matching module for determining corresponding distance values for elements of a character pattern stored in the dictionary and elements of the inputted character pattern for each of character patterns stored in the dictionary and correcting the determined distance values on the basis of the elements which bear no correspondency, and a processing unit for displaying on a display unit the character pattern for which the distance values are determined small.